Chapter 3, The Age of Chaucer

One main result of the calamities:
These calamities and upheavals nevertheless produced rising expectations, the principal beneficiaries of which were the increasingly wealthy and influential urban middle class. Thriving cities like London ran their own affairs under politically mayors and aldermen. (Norton P 8) Thus by the late fourteenth century, the original social composition of nobility, the church and serfs and peasants could not remain the same any more. A person’s social status in the society person’ was determined now not only birth but also by some other forces such as personal ability, profession, wealth and so on. A large and prosperous middle class was beginning to play increasingly important roles in church and state, blurring the traditional class boundaries, and it was into this middle class that Chaucer was born.
His literary activity:
His longest complete poem Troilus and Criseide, one of the greatest love poems in the world literature was adapted for Boccaccio’s The Love-Stricken. It tells how Boccaccio’ Lovethe Trojan Prince loved and lost Criseide to Greek warrior Diomede. Even if he had never written The Canterbury Tales, this poem would have placed him among the major English poets. Chaucer also wrote religious and moral works, chiefly translations, both in prose and poetry.
2. Chaucer and his The Canterbury
Tales
Chaucer’ Chaucer’s life, a true presentation of his time A page boy, serving the 100-year war and was a 100captured by France, serving in King Edward’s Edward’ personal household, diplomatic missions to Spain (1366), France (1368) and Italy (1372), after that a controller of customs on wool, sheepskins etc for the port of London and various other administrative work
Chapter Three
The Age of Chaucer
——the Fourteenth Century the
（four class hours） hours）
The first two hours
Ⅰ.The Historical Events: war and disease were prevalent throughout the Middle Ages but never more destructive than during the 14th century. There were:
II. Major authors of the century:
John Wycliff, the Gawain author, William Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer So the latter three writers’ appearance in the later part of writers’ 14th century is no coincidence, but has something to 14th do with the social, political, economical and cultural factors. factors. They responded to the age of crisis and cIn 1348 the first and most harmful epidemic of the black death swept Europe, wiping out a quarter to one third of the population. The results of this calamity were high prices, a scarcity of labour and a sudden expansion of the possibility of social mobility that caused considerable discontents.
1.
John Wycliff, and William Langland and their representative works
a. the contribution of John Wycliff b. the contribution of William Langland: 1). the definition of allegory; 2). The theme of Piers Plowman: i: it is the history of Christianity as it unfolds both in the world of the Old Testament and New Testament and in the life and heart of an individual fourteenthfourteenth-century Christian; ii: the way to salvation; iii. a comprehensive revelation of the time
3.The peasant uprising of 1381:
its cause: 1) feudal lords’ heavy exploitation and Oppression lords’ of the peasants; 2) the church had become the target of popular resentment because it was among the greatest of the oppressive landowners and because of the wealth, worldliness, and venality of many of the higher clergy.
Thus long before Chaucer conceived of The Canterbury Tales, his works were many faceted: Tales, they include poetry and prose; divine and human love; French, Latin and Italian influences; secular and religious influence; comedy and philosophy. Moreover , different elements are likely to mix in the same work making it difficult to extract from the surface simple, direct and certain meanings. This Chaucerian complexity owes much to Chaucer’ Chaucer’s wide range of learning and his exposure to the new continent literary currents, but maybe more to his special social position as a member of a new class of civil servants.
(2) the significance of the structure: showing his originality: the prologue, the tales by the pilgrims, and the links. Thus the poet maintains two fictions simultaneously: that of the individual story and that of the pilgrims whom he has made to tell the tales. He develops the second fiction first through the prologue, second through the links——the links——the interactions between the palmers, their commentary on the tales and especially the commentary from the host; third through the tale each pilgrim tells because the story would reveal much about the story teller himself or herself. 3) Chaucer’s contribution to the English language. Chaucer’